STATEMENT OF MR. NEVAL H. THOMAS, MEMBER EXECUTIVE BOARD, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Chairman and members of the Judiciary Committee, I represent the legislative committee of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The first point I wish to make is that it is the duty of this committee and Congress to pass this bill and put it up to the court. Then if the court reads away a bill which is designed to give men protection for their lives in this country the blood is on their hands and not upon the hands of the Congress of the nation. You have abundant precedent for doing any such thing. For 130 years and more you have been passing bills that have been read away one after another by the supreme judiciary of the land. You passed the Missouri Compromise in 1820. There were men of great legal learning in Congress on both sides of the question, and it stood for 37 years until Chief Justice Taney under the domination of the slave power read it away, so we had the benefit of it for 37 years, and then how did they read it away? They read it away by the obiter dictum. The Supreme Court has always been able to sidestep an issue when it means justice to black men, and they read a lengthy and learned opinion upon the slave question and said the case was dismissed for want of jurisdiction, that Dred Scott was a thing and had no standing before the court. That is what we ask them to do to forward the ends of justice. Charles Sumner's civil rights bill stood for 40 years and we received inestimable benefits until the Supreme Court again found a way to read away that. So this committee will be divided upon the constitutionality of this bill, and the Supreme Court of the United States will be divided. As some of its members have said, "The only reason we are right is because we get the last guess.'

So do not let Congress sit down and say, "We doubt the constitutionality of it, hence we will give these 12,000,000 suffering people no relief." That is not justice. Supposing it is ultimately read away. Why can not we, after the passage of this bill, put a constitutional amendment to the States? We can even get Southern men to get the legislatures of those States to ratify it because several of these Southern governors have thundered in trumpet tones against lynch law and some of them have been manly enough to call out the militia and uphold the law. We can get 45 States, I dare say to ratify a constitutional amendment. We have the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution and the constitutionality of it has been debated. We have just added the nineteenth, which is a forward movement in democracy, and makes for the moral betterment of this country. There are still doubts of its constitutionality, and although it is now in operation the Supreme Court has yet to rule upon it. Ought the men of this Congress, although there was a difference of opinion about the constitutionality say, "No, we will throw prohibition over." I claim that the 19 amendments to the Constitution compared in importance to this are like a farthing candle compared with the sun.

Mr. GRIMKE. You are speaking of the eighteenth amendment, prohibition?

Mr. THOMAS. The nineteenth is going through; the woman suffrage amendment is going through. Eighteen of them are forward movements in democracy, and one, the eighteenth, prohibition, is a great moral wave. So, as I say, we should not quibble over constitutionality. Put it up to the States and put it up to the Supreme Court. Everybody knows that the Supreme Court and every other court takes cognizance of public opinion. If the awakened conscience of the nation condemns mob violence, any court in the land. will reflect a righteous public sentiment. Anyhow, let us do our duty.

As I say, we have two ways of getting at this, by a law and by constitutional amendment, and both of them should be tried, and, gentlemen, do it for this reason, above all things, for the tremendous moral effect it will have upon this nation to have the Congress of the United States, the Congress which boasts of being the greatest legislative body in the world, declare that lynch law is murder, that lynch law is causing us to relapse back into barbarism and that primitive state of society which makes every man his personal avenger. It will have a tremendous effect upon mobs of the South and in the North where lynchings occur, because after you start lynching negroes, and you have found it to be true, you will wind up by lynching white men and lynching women and children.

The power to do one carries with it the power to do the other. Let us pass this law. It will have a tremendous effect upon the South and these lawless elements in the North, and it will show to the world that our lofty professions of justice and democracy are something more than mere rhetoric, and until we have gotten to the point where we do that they are rhetoric. Democracy is not rhetoric. Democracy is life. So let us vindicate the good name of the nation by showing the world, which is cognizant of what we are doing over here in spite of our boasts heralded about the world. We heard a great deal about democracy in Paris, but the 333 delegates that sat at the peace table knew what was going on here. It has been my privilege to wander over a goodly portion of the globe. I met representatives of the four corners of the earth in the shadows of the pyramids, and there where we were engrossed in the study of bygone days, these people went away from that and talked to me of the lynchings and of my submerged group of 12,000,000 Americans.

We colored people are jealous of the good name of this country, and as I wandered from country to country and different people expressed disgust with the many barbarous crimes to which we are subjected here it filled my heart with pain. Mr. Grimke has referred to the lynching of these people in Elaine as the shame of Elaine. It is America's shame. Germany, the most cruel nation in war that the world has seen, never committed an atrocity in war that these people have committed in days of peace, not against enemies, but people who loved them, people who wanted to live for America, people who are law-abiding and simply groaning under their oppression. I say we can find a way to stop this sort of thing, and the moral effect it will have upon the Nation, for mob law can not stand up against the moral indignation of the world. The foreign nations all condemn it, because lynching is an American institution, and here it abides alone; everywhere else on earth it is condemned. So, as I say, the lawless

sections of this country could not stand against the wave of the world's indignation.

Another thing, my friends; I put it on this lower ground, the ground of political expediency. That is not a good ground to appeal on, but I throw it in and make it last. Politically it will be the wisest piece of legislation that you have ever passed in this Nation. Remember, the cornered rat will fight. The worm turns. Don't tell us to be patient any more. We have tried patience, and as our patience grew the mob spirit grew until, gentlemen, last summer it came under the shadow of the dome of this Capitol and reached to the front door and steps of the White House, and colored people put patience away.

The State broke down. The police power of the State broke down and sympathized with the mob, and instead of arresting the perpetrators they were hunting down negroes who were bearing arms in self-defense and filled the jail. Some of these people were goaded to desperate resistance, and while the police were filling the jails they filled the morgue, and from Washington that spirit spread to Chicago and even invaded the South in Knoxville. Remember, don't try to make enemies out of people who want to get along with you and who love all white people who are great enough to be just. Make friends of the people who want to be friendly with you for your own sake, for the sake of the good name of the Nation and for the sake of the persecuted. Persecution hurts the persecutor and brings him down just as much as it does the poor, helpless victim, and you must. remember that self-defense is not only a divine right but a sacred duty, in spite of the Attorney General of the United States. Gentlemen, get Senate Document 153 and read the last 30 pages of that document, a prolonged wail against us people who are tired of being lynched, and the Attorney General is mortified that he should find a new reaction against mob violence, that we will no longer submit to hanging on a limb or over the crackling flame. Gentlemen, let me tell you, and this is no threat. We have found in many communities a cure for mob law, and when the State says it has no cure the individual is driven to self defense, a divine right, a sacred duty which lies at the basis of our constitution and is the basic creed of all free institutions. I do not say it as a threat but when the mob comes we are going to meet it with that same desperate courage with which we died on Flanders field and stormed the towers of mighty Metz. These men fought Germany in distant fields against organized autocracy, supposedly for democracy. We can fight right at home in defense of our loved ones, our little babes, our wives and children and our mothers.

As I say, you must not feel that we are doing anything that is wrong when we strike back at the fellow who is attacking us. I can give you my own personal experience. I had never owned a pistol in my life. I saw the necessity of it when I saw the mob raging before my house, and now I am ready for the mob, just as thousands of other colored people are ready for the mob, and the indifference of the Nation has made it necessary that we prepare to preserve the greatest thing in life, which is life itself. So I ask you gentlemen not to be indifferent. I know the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments have been read away largely by judicial decree and national indifference. I say you are simply forcing us to the wall. We realize that the State has broken down. I have heard expressions

by so many white men who have heard southern white men talk of their determination to see that these soldiers 400,000 strong, drafted and sent to distant fields to fight for democracy shall not have any of that democracy for which they so gloriously died.

There is a growing spirit among Negroes that if we are able to face Germany's awful fire, the most terrific military machine the world has ever seen, if we can carry the American flag to the Rhine, we can certainly preserve the lives of the poor little innocent, helpless babes of the Negro women living right here in America. Gentlemen, you will know this, that when law-abiding people are goaded to desperate resistance and they organize to drive the mob back, you have war, and in war, reprisal, that dangerous thing, is always resorted to. What do you have? The lives of innocent white men and women, lives of innocent black men and women and children, put into jeopardy.

We saw that in this mob here last spring. It was dangerous for white people to go into Negro districts and dangerous for any Negro to go into white districts, and here you put into peril the lives of innocent people who have absolutely no sympathy with mob law. I would like to see this Nation, since it calls itself a great democracy, although we have lived here for 250 years and never enjoyed a single blessing from democracy, rise to its sense of duty and teach the world that we are able to live up to these lofty professions which President Wilson heralded all over Europe and all over the world, although he is so painfully silent upon them here in this country. You should try to destroy every bit of discrimination, as Mr. Grimke has pointed out. When you take away one man's rights, you cheapen those rights and you teach Americans that he is an inferior thing, that he can be imposed upon with impunity, hence you invite lynching, you invite the mob to attack him, thinking that it has murdered a lower order of being and that it is to suffer no punishment for it. The rights are all the same-the right to go into the restaurant of the House of Representatives, of the Senate and Library across the way, that belong to me as they do to all the other 112,000,000 of people in this country. The right to go to those places is as sacred as the right to live, and when we contend for that we are simply trying to vindicate the sacred principle of democracy, which is just as sacred as life itself.

Let the Congress of the United States lead the way. Masses everywhere are like sheep. They follow leaders. All that is necessary to destroy wrong in this country is for the men who occupy the seats. of power to attack and condemn. President Wilson, with the stroke of his pen could destroy segregation in the departments to-day and every subordinate under him would say "Amen." He could restore the merit system to the civil service with equal ease. The Congress of the United States could destroy lynching. The Supreme Court rose in its might two years ago and destroyed residential segregation, in which the Hon. Mr. Dyer and his great family figured so promunently in the State of Missouri. Let men in places of power say that laws must be obeyed and the commonalty of men will obey them. It is the indifference of the law-making bodies and executives of the States and city and Nation that makes the mob.

So, gentlemen, let me plead with you in the name of the thousands of brave, black boys who never saw a free day that at this very hour are sleeping their last sleep upon the sweet hilltops in France in your

defense, let me beg of you in the name of the loved ones that they have left, and for whom they made the supreme sacrifice in the hope that those loved ones would get the thing for which they were told to die; I say, let me plead with you to declare before the world that we believe in democracy in actual life and not in rhetoric. Then we will stand, having solved the problem of the ages, that of making a free government from a great mass of the people.

STATEMENT OF PROF. GEORGE WILLIAM COOK, HOWARD UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. Cook. I have been coming to the Capitól appearing before committees for nigh onto 20 years. I must say that I have never been before a committee where the occasion was of such vast and deep importance as this appearance to-day. You may read it through the inference or read where the inference is given, or you may read it out of the logic of events, that this committee representing the judiciary of the United States in Congress assembled is to-day challenged. The presentation of facts and conditions here to-day are such that if this committee does not take a very serious consideration of it it is scarcely up to the level of its own duty.

We did not come here to-day simply for the purpose of talking to you. We came here to convince you as we know it, and as we hope to show it to you that this awful carnage of lynching and injustice in so many different ways must be stopped or we have our backs to the wall. My family is broken to-day and let me give you the circumstances. As my wife and I motored from Washington last July, we heard in Baltimore that there was a race riot in Washington. It was Tuesday after Monday the last day of the riot. We hastened here because we had one son, our only child, a young boy whom we found home, and I asked him. "Where were you, George?" "I was in it." "Why were you in it?" "You can not take me out and shoot me like a dog. I am going to die fighting if I have to die." There is an 18-year-old boy. He contemplated that thing, and he said finally, "Papa, I am not going to stay here." He is somewhat of a law unto himself. I said, "Where are you going?" "I am going out of the country." "Where do you propose to go first?" "I think that I will go to Canada and go to school." He went to Canada. These holidays he returned to Washington on a visit and he was not home two days before he said, "I smelt it as soon as I reached Baltimore and I am going away again."

Now, you may consider that as an isolated case or you may consider it trivial. I have been teaching young colored men for 40 years. I have tested the opinion and growing conviction. I want to say if you want to drive out a pure unadulterated loyalty that has existed in the colored man, just allow this lynching to continue. You are all men of spirit and courage and belong to the Anglo-Saxon race. You would not stand it. You did not stand taxation without representation with very little personal violence attached to it and you were right, and I want to say here as far as I can gauge my people they are loyal to the backbone, they want no disturbance, and they will accept none until forced to. That is our position in the matter.

Why did I speak of that boy? Do you want to drive citizens who are loyal from your shores. You have sent away the undesirables.